{"id":1164,"date":"2010-09-05T01:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-05T06:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2010-10-04T11:40:33","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T15:40:33","slug":"the-messy-but-necessary-leakocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1164","title":{"rendered":"The Messy But Necessary Leakocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n

The Messy But Necessary Leakocracy<\/h2>\n

Published in the Maryland Daily Record September 7, 2010<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I suspect many of us reacted with some glee at the initial tale of the big Wikileaks document dump concerning the Afghan war<\/a>.\u00a0 I suspect, though, that few continued to feel unmixed glee at hearing reasonable-sounding claims that the revelation of the documents might cost lives, for instance among the U.S. network of Afghan informants, now identified to the Taliban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a familiar dance of ambivalence.\u00a0 We all like seeing government cut down to size.\u00a0 But we also want government to remain strong enough to do whatever it is we happen to like seeing government do.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So it balances out.\u00a0 Except for true-blue anarchists, most of us want government to have some secrets.\u00a0 We understand that military and intelligence organizations whose doings were an open book would not be able to function.\u00a0 We don\u2019t usually want our military plans to be freely known, nor the names of our secret agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, these are our<\/em> secrets.\u00a0 We the people established this government, and we feel entitled to exact accountability from\u00a0 it.\u00a0 We want it understood that the government makes and keeps these secrets as a trustee.\u00a0 Like every trustee, it has received what it administers for definite purposes.\u00a0 Not all uses are legitimate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And therein lies the problem.\u00a0 Year after year, administration after administration, secrecy is abused to cover up policy choices that could not have been made publicly, because the government knew the public would probably not agree to them, like, to choose two known examples from the Bush administration, illegal wiretaps and torture<\/a>.\u00a0 To choose a likely example from the Obama administration, drone assassinations that kill lots of innocent civilians<\/a>.\u00a0 Often, secrecy is used to evade accountability for lies or for corruption.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And it would be easier if\u00a0 the trustees of the trustees, for instance, in military and intelligence spheres, the chairs and ranking members of the Congressional intelligence and armed services committees (sometimes augmented by their four counterparts across the aisle), could be trusted to talk intelligently if tactfully to the public when the keepers of the secrets they oversee are covering up something wrong.\u00a0 But don\u2019t hold your breath.\u00a0 The aforementioned torture program was divulged to these purported legislative overseers, but\u00a0 they could not speak publicly without fear of prosecution, and they could not even talk to other members of Congress to urge legislative counteraction.<\/a>\u00a0 As a result, Congress was not informed, and the \u201cGang of Four\/Eight\u201d served of no real use to America.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Enter the leakers and the press and blogger community who disseminate what the leakers share.\u00a0 Their role is not institutionalized, and there is little or no quality control on what leaked information they divulge, save what they themselves provide.\u00a0 As a result, things that should stay secret often become public, but things that need to be made public, like the torture and the wiretaps, often are publicized as well.\u00a0 Governments hate this, although with a caveat: surreptitious official leaks designed to influence public opinion and embarrass one\u2019s political adversaries are every bit as common as unofficial ones designed to subvert secrecy.\u00a0 The unmasking of Valerie Plame was a prime example<\/a>, but it goes on all the time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That caveat aside, though, it seems that of late governmental hatred of the leakocracy, to coin a phrase, has grown.\u00a0 Partly that\u2019s because the power of leakers has grown.\u00a0 Back in 1971[1] Daniel Ellsberg had to put in six weeks of hard work to copy the Pentagon Papers.\u00a0 The tens of thousands of Afghan War documents Wikileaks recently made public were probably maintained in portable format in the first place and then pirated on a peripheral drive.\u00a0 Loading all of them could take less than an hour.\u00a0 This was, of course, a drop in the bucket; the recent Washington Post series on the size of America\u2019s secret government<\/a> gives some idea of the sheer volume of secrets out there.\u00a0 The font of unspilled secrets is not about to run dry.\u00a0 But computers have given the leakers a wider reach and the ability to move faster.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Still, there is now a new concerted effort by federal prosecutors to force journalists to divulge leakers\u2019 names<\/a>.\u00a0 The jailing of Judith Miller for refusing to divulge her sources regarding Plame, and the near-jailing of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams<\/a> of the San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, who reported on grand jury testimony in the BALCO athlete-doping scandal , are ominous.\u00a0 Because of the failure of institutional overseers, the leakocracy serves as a valuable if not vital safety valve in our society. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The game has always contained a delicate if unspoken balancing act: everyone accepts that leakers can be prosecuted or at least sued if caught, but when they speak to the press they are in a kind of sanctuary.\u00a0 There is no national press shield law; the sanctuary mostly exists by virtue of prosecutorial self-restraint.\u00a0 Hence if leakers are caught, it\u2019s not because the journalists turned them in.\u00a0 This balance has made possible a much better informed public debate on security matters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An example of that value and the threat to it: the threats to prosecute James Risen of the New York Times, apparently for his refusal to identify to investigators the sources of the leaks evident in his invaluable book State of War (2006)<\/a><\/em>, which this column has cited.\u00a0 That book is a searing indictment of CIA and NSA ineptness in a variety of contexts (vouching for WMD they knew didn\u2019t exist, sending nuclear secrets to<\/em> the Iranians, betraying the names of our entire network of Iranian informants, and engaging in warrantless NSA wiretapping).\u00a0 It was a fine and responsible piece of journalism.\u00a0 It was also a huge embarrassment to the government.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For protecting his book\u2019s sources from prosecutors interested in leaks about the Iran material, it appears likely Risen is headed for prison \u2013 even though no one denies the accuracy of any of Risen\u2019s information, and there were no evident compromises of ongoing national security in the book.\u00a0 There was an argument to be made that Risen damaged national security by being one of the Times<\/em> team that had broken the NSA surveillance story in 2005<\/a>.\u00a0 Bush called that \u201ca shameful act,\u201d<\/a> if you recall.\u00a0 But as I argued at the time<\/a> that disclosure was justified by the wound the NSA surveillance program inflicted on our Constitutional culture, disinfectable only by sunlight \u2013 and in any case the State of War<\/em> Iran material was entirely separate.\u00a0 No fair punishing Risen indirectly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What may happen to James Risen can dampen the marketplace for leaks a bit, but cannot quell it.\u00a0 Effective independent oversight of the secret-keepers would address the root of the problem, but we don\u2019t have that and are unlikely to get it.\u00a0 Failing that, leaks are inevitable, and, on balance, a good thing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If we ever actually get oversight of our institutions that reliably restrains them from doing unconstitutional and or improper things, then and only then could plugging leaks by hounding journalists and bloggers for their sources begin to make sense.\u00a0 Until then, chilling their activities this way will predictably encourage abuses, by government, by business, even, as we\u2019ve seen, by big-time sports, more than it protects useful secrecy.<\/p>\n

[1].\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alasdair Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age<\/em><\/a> at 73 (2006).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Copyright \u00a9 Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The role of the leakers and the press and bloggers who disseminate what the leakers share is not institutionalized, and there is little or no quality control. But as a result of their actions, things that need to be made public, like torture and illegal wiretaps, often are publicized. The Leakocracy serves as a valuable if not vital safety valve in our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1146,1168,1150,1164,1162,84,1169,1171,660,577,1154,1156,1163,1149,1153,1152,136,1148,1147,1151,1165,1158,1160,1143,1144,1159,1167,780,771,372,1170,794,1161,1157,1166,19,1155,779,1145],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture","tag-afghan-war","tag-alasdair-roberts","tag-armed-services-committee","tag-athlete-doping","tag-balco","tag-barack-obama","tag-blacked-out","tag-bloggers","tag-central-intelligence-agency","tag-cia","tag-congressional-oversight","tag-daniel-ellsberg","tag-doping","tag-drone-assassinations","tag-gang-of-eight","tag-gang-of-four","tag-george-w-bush","tag-illegal-wiretaps","tag-informants","tag-intelligence-committee","tag-james-risen","tag-judith-miller","tag-lance-williams","tag-leakocracy","tag-leaks","tag-mark-fainaru-wada","tag-national-security-agency","tag-new-york-times","tag-nsa","tag-pentagon-papers","tag-press-shield","tag-prosecutorial-discretion","tag-san-francisco-chronicle","tag-secret-government","tag-state-of-war","tag-torture","tag-valerie-plame","tag-washington-post","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1200,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}